The Problem With The Republicans: So Many Candidates, So Few Brain Cells And Terrible Ideas (OP-ED And Images)

POTUS race has obstacles the GOP can’t overcome

As I look down the long list of GOP candidates who have stepped onto the campaign trail to the White House, I’m quite the ecstatic liberal that thus far the Republicans don’t have a single good contender running for President.

They’ve had eight full years to come up with a candidate and unsurprisingly they’ve got nobody worth a damn. Nada. Zilch. Eight years of endless griping, fear-mongering, and shooting down everything the President proposes but not a single leader among them.

I’m not surprised by this at all, as much as the “leaders” of the party do cut down the President for his policy, they don’t have plans of their own as to how the country should be run. They only think they know how not to run the country and that’s kind of a problem for a candidate whom half the country is looking at for leadership.

There are twenty-three GOP candidates running thus far, and not a single clue between them. A handful of others are still “exploring” and will most likely run.

My early predictions have me thinking that we’ll be saddled with either Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio or Scott Walker as a nominee (he hasn’t announced but polls high). Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Donald Trump, to name a few, definitely do not have a chance. Huffington Post’s interactive polling guide (which updates every time a new poll is released) shows that it’s literally anybody’s game between the first and second tier. One day Ben Carson is on top by a mere single digit point lead, the next Rubio, then Walker and the top-tier candidates all have about 10 percent support each. The second tier have about five percent each and the third have a lowly two percent or lower. There is a fourth tier but they don’t even register on polls.

What I think is really happening with all the sharks in the pool is that they’re trying to disappear into the crowd to hide their crazy and win with only marginal support — and it really doesn’t matter who wins, because they’re literally all the same. No one really stands out for having drastically different beliefs or approaches to leadership.

They’re like a school of fish, only they’re all sharks and are fighting over the same piece of meat. They’re all the exact same level of stupid, evil, corrupt and terrible. There are no tepid, moderate contenders who seem willing to compromise with the left-wing on anything the left-wing cares about.

And what does the right-wing steadfastly stand for? Denying climate change and staying dependent on coal and oil.

They are pushing an agenda to overturn women’s rights to abortions and birth control and equal pay. They are all still into denying LGBT rights even though gay marriage is legal in most states and the majority of the country now supports rights and protections for the LGBT community.

They are pushing for religious “freedom” which means the freedom to discriminate against people they don’t like (like those icky gays, Muslims and Atheists).

And guns, guns, guns — many of the candidates actually oppose any sort of restriction on gun ownership including something as simple as registration. All of them support as few restrictions as possible.

Most seem to be beating the war drum for ISIS, which means if they win we’ll be bungled up in the Middle East for another decade. Kiss amnesty good-bye.

All seem to want to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, which is a terrible idea considering it’s working out for millions of Americans. It’ll be interesting to see whether or not their hard stances against the program have changed, but I’m guessing not. That or they’ll lie until they get to office and then gut the program.

Most importantly, zero of the Republican candidates care about wealth-inequality. They don’t care that Americans are working full-time, or multiple jobs and are still on government assistance, or the fact seniors are living on $7,000 a year, or about homeless veterans or homelessness in general. All oppose raising the minimum wage, because their corporate masters oppose it, yet all are against any form of government assistance and they won’t acknowledge that they can’t have it both ways. This is a key issue for an overwhelming number of Americans. They simply don’t have the guts to stand up to vulture capitalists.

If they can’t lead or compromise with all types of people, they just aren’t Presidential material.

So besides the obvious obstacle of an overstocked pond, how can they possibly expect to lead a country that is full of poor people, women, LGBT folks, Atheists (which now outnumber Protestants and Catholics), environmentalists, science-lovers, victims of gun violence and those against another war? They simply can’t, and that’s great for the Democrats because Democrats have shown time and time again they can compromise with the right-wing on certain issues, but it’s a MAJOR obstacle for the right-wing.

It’s a lesson they should learn from Mitt Romney’s campaign. His remarks about not taking care of the 47 percent who will never vote probably completely dashed any shred of hope he had for the Presidency. The fact that Romney’s buddies in this election are making the same error of only trying to gain support from half the country really is a gift.

The Republicans have also become ultra-exclusive.

After Obama was elected, the Republicans ran around shooting themselves in their feet. They pulled much further to the right, teetering on the edge of becoming Libertarian, and the Koch’s played a major part in the shift. But America is liberal by nature, even if half the country can only speak in Fox News talking points.

They like their social security, and their medicare, and their social safety nets. A good majority of people on government assistance are Conservative. They like what their taxes do for them for the most part, and they wouldn’t like it if corporations were allowed to chip away at workers rights. Their kids go to public school and they should be outrages when Republicans strip education funding.

No matter what right-wing voters say, they like these safeguards and benefits. All of which are in danger should a Republican in the current climate become President, and that’s enough for any moderate to vote Democrat. They are simply too much of a threat to too many good programs and ideas in America.

Now, Republicans think they have it in the bag. After all, they are in the majority in the House and Senate, they’ve been running a somewhat successful smear campaign of Hillary Clinton (the Democrats best chance thus far) and they know far-left liberals are threatening to stay home if Clinton gets the nomination because they’re Sanders fans. Which may end up proving successful for the GOP, but if they do win the election, how can they possibly lead the country without causing some sort of mutiny?

If perhaps they did win by some cruel twist of fate, it would help their party move back towards the center and end all this crazy they’ve put our country through in the last eight years. They’re just going to have a tough time convincing Americans which one of them is capable, or at least, not as stupid as the rest of them.

I honestly can’t think of which among them it will be, but they have an uphill battle that’s only going to get steeper the more they open their mouths and ignore their focus group research. The best we can do as informed voters is hold them accountable for their pasts if they try to flip-flop to the White House. Make sure their voting base knows the kind of crazy they’re about to cast a ballot for.

And, if you’re up there God, please send us a ‘Mitt Romney 47 percent’ gaffe a month before the election. That’s all we want is a video of Jeb smearing peanut butter all over his body and letting his brother’s dog lick it off, or Rand Paul without his wig. Something. Anything to ensure we don’t lose the nation’s most powerful seat when Obama leaves.

Our country simply cannot have a GOP President. It can’t happen. Don’t let it happen.

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Jenna LeFever is an activist, feminist, online writer and truth-seeker. She currently lives in the desert hellscape that is Arizona which has become a a Tea Party nightmare for her. She looks forward to the day Sheriff Arpaio is run out of office by townspeople wielding pitchforks and torches. "It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness." -Eleanor Roosevelt